“She is a witch,” hissed Louise. “She has breathed new life into him. He looks ten years younger than he did before his marriage. He was never so besotted with Anne as he is with this one, and Anne could lead him by the nose.”
“Oh, Mother,” sighed Marguerite, “who would have thought it would have come to this? Each night she is in his bed. There can be one outcome.”
“All our hopes … all our plans …,” moaned Louise.
“And at that time,” muttered Francois, “when the crown seemed about to be placed on my head!”
The trinity was in despair.
The Queen was aware of this. Mischief would lighten her eyes every time she met one of the family. Yet behind her gaiety there was a certain brooding, a watchfulness.
The heat of the ballroom had been excessive; outside the temperature was at freezing point.
They had danced and retired late to their apartments; the Queen lay in her royal bed, rejoicing. There could be no love-making tonight. He was too ill. He could not pretend to her as glibly as he did to others.
She had comforted him. “My poor Louis, you are so tired. You shall sleep. I shall be close to you … thus … and when you have rested you will feel well again.”
She bent over him and, looking up into her round young face, he longed to caress her; but she was right, he was too tired.
So he lay still and she lay beside him, keeping her fingers laced in his.
And she thought: It cannot be long now. Something tells me.
She was sorry and yet exulting. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and ask his pardon. She wanted to say: I wish you dead, Louis, and I hate myself for wishing it; but I cannot stop this wish.
It was long before she slept. She kept thinking of the heated ballroom, and she fancied she could still hear the sound of music mingling with the howling wind outside. Faces flashed in and out of her mind. Francois, lean and hungry … hungry for her body, half loving her, half hating her, since the tournament in which Charles had beaten him. Louise, alert and fearful, those glances which covered the whole of her body, speculatively fearful; and Marguerite so anxious that her brother’s way to the throne should not be blocked. The King … whose spirit yearned toward a greater amorousness than his body would allow.
She thought of Charles in the arena—the dreadful moment when she thought the German would unseat him and perhaps inflict some injury. Then she remembered him, victorious, receiving the prize from her hands.
How long? How long? she asked herself.
She did not have to wait for the answer.
She would never forget waking on the morning of New Year’s Day when the wintry light filtered into the bedchamber and on to the gray face of the man in the bed. She leaned over him in deep compassion and said: “Louis … you are very sick today?”
He did not answer her. He did not even know it was his beautiful Queen who had spoken.
Then she knew that the day for which she had prayed and yearned had come.
The door of the cage was opening; she would soon be free.
Yet when she looked down at that withered face, at the bleak, unseeing eyes, she could only murmur: “The pity of it!”
Is the Queen
DRESSED COMPLETELY IN WHITE, Mary sat alone in that room in the Hotel de Clugny which was known as
Mary was relieved to be able to shut herself away in this manner. Her husband was dead but she knew that she was not yet free to make another marriage, and that there would be all sorts of opposition to her choice possibly not only from England but from France. She had come to understand that the English and the French would be wrangling over her dowry, her jewels, and all the costly appurtenances with which they had thought it necessary to load her before making her Queen of France. The fight was not yet over; therefore it was a pleasure to be shut away from the Court and be alone with a few of her attendants: six whole weeks in which to review the new life which lay ahead and to plan that she should not again be deprived of her heart’s desire.
The Hotel de Clugny was situated in the Rue des Mathurins and had once been the home of Cluniac monks. It was small compared with Les Tournelles, but her own apartments were adequate; and somberly fitted out as a mourning chamber and lighted only by wax tapers, they gave her the feeling that she was shut away from the world; in such intimate surroundings she could think clearly.
Strangely enough she did mourn Louis, for she could not forget his gentleness and many kindnesses; and in spite of her relief she was a little sad because she had longed for his death; so while she exulted in her freedom she was a little melancholy; and now that he was dead she knew that she was not yet out of danger.
This was made clear to her during her interview with Francois; for although she was shut away from the Court her close relations were allowed to visit her; and of course these included Francois.
They faced each other and neither was able to suppress the excitement which burned beneath that solemn facade which convention demanded they should show the world. His future was in the balance, no less than hers, for whether or not he was to be King of France would be decided in a few weeks. Perhaps she could tell him now.
“My dearest
